


Perfect:

by JustAnotherOutcast



Category: White Collar
Genre: But like in the dream so not really, Character Death, Crying, Dreams, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Lots of Thinking, i dont know how to tag this, its pretty much only thinking right now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 10:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12703206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherOutcast/pseuds/JustAnotherOutcast
Summary: Diana always figured that Neal wasn't the type to allow himself to cry. She was right, but that didn't mean he was always dry-eyed. At least he did his best to hide it.





	Perfect:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diana has a rather startling dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clear warnings just to start this out, this has guns and kidnapping and someone being shot in the head, so uh, please stay safe and don't read if that's something you can't deal with.

It was undoubtedly a dream — after all, nothing about the situation really made that much sense — but it felt real at the time.

They had been kidnapped, something to do with the case they had been working, though the dream wasn’t clear on exactly what case, or what it was about. They were held in a conference room in a skyscraper, two of the four walls around them made up entirely of glass. It gave them a stunning view of the city around them, and Diana couldn’t help but reflect on how ironically vibrant the world around them had been; the sky was clear, and the sunbeams poured into the room, the polished plastic and glass furniture around them glinting in the rays. Not exactly the type of lighting one would expect for a kidnapping scene.

The two of them had been tied up in some kind of thick wire cable, hands bound behind them and ankles in front as they leaned against one of the walls. Of all the times to have Caffrey with her, it had to be when he couldn’t pick any locks to get them out. Peter and Jones were nowhere to be seen, and her brain had given her no explanation as to where they were. She supposed it didn’t really matter though, because she hadn’t paid attention to that little bit of information during the dream. No, she was a little preoccupied by the Skype call.

For whatever reason, the mastermind behind their kidnapping had a Skype call set up with them in the conference room. The television was on the same wall that they were leaned against, yet for some strange reason, Diana knew what the man on the screen was doing as if the screen were in front of her. Apparently her brain wasn’t the best at sensibly blocking the dream scene out.

The criminal on the screen was composed, pretty much the stereotypical aristocratic crime lord, with his gloved hands laced in his lap as he sat in a lavish office chair. He spoke in a condescending way, she remembered that. She couldn’t describe the voice beyond the fact that it pissed her off. And after waking, she couldn’t remember a single thing the man had said. After waking, she didn’t really care.

She was aware of the situation though. Despite the annoying lack of context in any other regard, the dream gave her the background knowledge to know that they were in a dire situation. They had no means of escape, and there was _something_ being held over them both. She doubted it was blackmail, but she couldn’t be sure. Maybe there was a threat against their loved ones, or maybe they were being tortured in some way. It wasn’t clear what the stressor was, but it was obviously bad.

She knew it was bad because it broke Caffrey.

It wasn’t like he went crazy and started trashing the room or screaming at the man on the Skype call. And it wasn’t like he started bawling or confessing all of his past crimes or anything. He still had a Caffrey worthy smile on his face when he spoke.

“Hey, you’ve still got those guns, right?”

Or maybe it was “You mentioned something about assassins” or even “Yeah, I think I’m done now.”

Whatever it was, it was far too casual. She remembered that, because his tone was completely contradictory. Of course he tried to stay composed as he spoke, tried to sound as nonchalant as his phrasing, but his voice didn’t cooperate. His usual Caffrey charm had vanished, and that alone was enough to make the dream feel like a proper nightmare.

Because whatever it was that was holding them there, beyond the wires tying their limbs together, whatever torture they were being subjected to, it was bad enough that Caffrey had opted to die in order to escape it.

The second Caffrey spoke, a man with a gun entered the conference room, and Diana was pretty sure that the Skype man smiled. Even thinking back on it after she woke, she wanted so badly to punch that bastard till he couldn’t smile again.

She had started shouting, protesting, telling Caffrey to stop, telling the man with the gun to back off. She didn’t remember what she said exactly, but she remembered being frantic, as well as pissed beyond all belief. The man with the gun was patient, expressionless — _faceless_ , really, the way unimportant people in dreams were — waiting as she tried to scream Caffrey back from the metaphorical ledge she saw him on.

Caffrey had barely acknowledged her, and was completely ignoring the man, staring woefully into the distance, as if there wasn’t anyone’s legs blocking the view. But it didn’t last. She watched him break right before her eyes.

His face contorted, so slowly she didn’t notice it at first. His head lowered, almost jerkingly as he began to tremble; his smile didn’t drop, but instead twisted into a grimace; and he began to cry.

It was like something out of an animated film, where the tears are far too big and far too many to be realistic. They bubbled up in his eyes and dribbled down his chin, big and wet and impossibly crystalline. And like the room around them with a spectacular view, like the goddamn _furniture_ , they glinted in the sunlight. Tears were tumbling down her colleague’s cheeks, and her dream had decided that those tears — his fucking _tears_ — were perfect.

Exactly what you’d expect from a man as perfect as Neal Caffrey.

But he wasn’t perfect, not in the slightest, not right then. Right then, he had a gun pointed at his head — a gun that he had _asked for_ — and he was silently sobbing, not speaking a word, his lips still desperately trying to smile, and just as desperately failing. And Diana was terrified.

She didn’t wake up what the man with the gun pulled the trigger. No, her brain decided to keep her inside that conference room for just a few more seconds, just long enough to see everything  — _everything_ — fall away from Caffrey’s face, to see him fall into an eerie stillness that was almost more Caffrey-like than him crying had been. There wasn’t any blood; for whatever reason her brain decided to skip that part. There was just a dark hole in his forehead and a painfully neutral expression on his face.

She woke up suddenly, her eyes flying open, her body rigid. It took her far too long to relax into the gentle hold of her girlfriend, and even when she did, she had trouble getting back to sleep.

As she stared up at the dark ceiling, she realized that she had never seen Caffrey cry. She had never seen Jones cry either, or Peter if she didn’t count that time he rubbed hot sauce in his eye.

But the realization was less about never having seen Caffrey cry, and more that she hadn’t even considered it a possibility. Caffrey always held himself with an air of invincibility, like nothing could possibly stop him from being who he wanted to be at that moment. He didn’t break, and he didn’t cry. At least not in front of anyone.

Diana assumed that that was something Caffrey would never allow; slipping out of the con man act, losing his confidence, wasn’t an option. She could understand why. She, and probably most of the agents in the FBI, were the same. You don’t break under pressure, cuz the job _is_ pressure. And even though Caffrey wasn’t an agent, hadn’t been trained the way they had, Diana could safely guess that his illegal exploits of previous fell into a pretty similar category of “under pressure.”

Caffrey thrived under pressure. He’d shown it time and time again, with nearly every undercover op he’d participated in. But everyone had a breaking point, sometimes ones they weren’t even aware of themselves. Diana knew from experience.

Apparently, Diana had no clue what that point was for Caffrey; even in her dream, she hadn’t had a clear idea of what pressure they were under. In fact, she had no idea whatsoever.

So as she felt her eyelids grow heavy once more, she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of hell would break Caffrey that badly. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeeah, so I had this dream, and that was fun. It was really jarring actually, and you'd think that I'd be more focused on the whole situation after waking up, but no, all I thought was "god damn those tears were fucking gorgeous." It was weird, but now I'm trying to teach myself to draw tears like the ones i saw in the dream. Fun fun.
> 
> Anyway, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to turn the dream into a fic, and ended up deciding that it would be cooler to have Diana have the dream instead of try to write a proper kidnapping fic (cuz I have no idea what could be so bad that Neal would opt to kill himself, so there was no way I could write that with any form of confidence).
> 
> Hope yall enjoyed. There should be more coming, but I'm not sure how long this story's gonna be.


End file.
